Tag: ender

A while back I had to diagram interactions between components in a KRB5+LDAP+NFS4 system. Instead of laying this out by hand, I went with GraphViz. I think I had known of its existence, but when I forget what the name of it is, I tend to look up this diagram of Ender stories from Wikipedia. The diagram I made is below, if you happen to have a Celerra laying around. Recently, I’ve started playing with GraphViz again to do some stuff for my current job, but have found out that one thing it doesn’t really do are the directory-tree type layouts one expects to find in most file managers today. Maybe they’ll add that as a different layout engine at some point.

Last night I finished reading Ender in Exile , the “mid-quel” that is essentially the hub in the wheel of the Enderverse, despite it being the most recently published. As is apt to happen in any prolific series, it does suffer from some continuity issues the author describes, but since I more recently read the shadow series and least recently Ender’s Game, I really didn’t notice them.

It was good to read more of Ender following the war before his transition to the much older character found in Speaker for the Dead. The journey to Shakespeare Colony and Ender’s work there was a great story line, and one that I think could have been expounded upon further. The book also gives a much more complete picture of Colonel Graff that was welcome. The story line surrounding Ganges Colony and the Bean-offspring-raised-to-be-Achilles seemed more forced and interested me less.

What stories are yet to be told in the Enderverse? Well, apparently one is in the works. My hope is that it will continue Bean’s story. If I remember right, we last see him departing Earth on his own relativistic voyage.

Patrick had often spoke of how Ender’s Game was one of his favorite books, and when Chris mentioned he had recently read it, I jumped at the opportunity to borrow it. It’s a quick read and definitely worth it. It does make one wonder how much gifted young children are capable of in a suitable environment, especially in the context of how our society continues to extend childhood–pretty much through college. There’s also enough moral ambiguity to keep one second-guessing the choices made by the characters. Although I know that a movie interpretation wouldn’t be able to give the book justice (the kids will have to be too old to master the dialog, and the amount of full-action large-area zero-G sequences would be staggering), I still look forward to the possibility.